Rick Perry’s Pelosi debate — great idea, or greatest idea?

Rick Perry would like to debate some more. No longer satisfied with the caliber of opponents in his own party — did you see that Herman Cain flub on Libya? How embarrassing! — he is now seeking beyond it, inviting House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to take him on mano a mano. The invite reads, in part:

“I am in Washington Monday and would love to engage you in a public debate about my Overhaul Washington plan versus the congressional status quo.

“I think it would be a tremendous service to the American public to see a public airing of those differences. Let the people decide.

“If Monday doesn't work, perhaps we could find a time in Iowa over the course of the next month to discuss these issues in front of the people of America's heartland.”

The invitation includes other classic moments — “My plan,” Perry notes, “would overhaul Washington, eliminating certain agencies and reducing the size and scope of others.” Good callback! Reminds everyone why another debate is such a grand idea.

Really, Rick? You couldn’t beat the game on the easy level! Why do you think ratcheting it up to hard — or even intermediate — will make things better?

“The only reason I lost before was that the debates were not challenging enough,” Perry says. “If you asked Einstein to assemble a puzzle aimed at 4-year-olds, he would probably appear equally dazed and disoriented, and people might think he, too, was some sort of moron.”

I don’t know how good a debater Nancy Pelosi is. Perhaps Perry is aware of some weakness in her that I am not. But to conceive of a debater who is worse than Rick Perry is beyond the scope of my imagination. I have seen ham sandwiches that were more menacing adversaries than Rick Perry. Sweaty, criminal-looking, untelegenic Nixon of the Nixon-Kennedy debates would still beat Perry, if only because he didn’t pause and murmur, “Oops!” IBM’s Watson could probably beat Perry at a debate — sure, it’s a machine incapable of human speech, but it takes less long to come up with an answer. Heck, I could beat Rick Perry, and people describe my TV presence as comparable to a “turkey in heat.”

Why is Perry inviting anyone to debate?

This is the flounder that has just been drubbed by the medium-sized fish demanding a larger, higher-profile pond.

This is like a man sentenced to beheading who keeps e-mailing the headsman afterward. “Hey, miraculously, my head still seems to be attached, can you come by and try again later?”

Perry needs all the help he can get. His funding sources have dried up, in adherence to the rule that people are generally most willing to help those who don’t need it. They seem less risky. Perry, polling an embarrassing 9.9 percent — behind Newt Gingrich! — is too much of an exposure.

Usually, when we are doing badly, we try to take refuge in the things we are good at. Not Perry.

If anyone else were inviting him to debate, we would shake our heads. “That’s mean,” we’d say. “That’s overkill. Stop kicking the man when he’s down.”